This blog was designed for Ideology (Democracy, Communism Fascism) students of Pannasastra University of Cambodia (PUC). Students will be invited to post three 3 major course papers as per relevant course requirements. Anyone with the knowledge of the topic is welcome to contribute to this forum with the moderator reserving the right to accept and reject postings, in whole or in part.

+ INTRODUCTION: As we have already known, China was once a poor, centrally planned economy, as well as communist country and it was ruled under a cruel and dictatorial leadership: Mao Zedong’s regime. Millions of people were killed during his revolutionary, which was involved by peasants. Later on, after Mao’s death in 1976, the next Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, who was a bit more flexible and less cruel than Mao, had brought China more developed, carrying out many reforms, such as social, political, and especially economic, in which China is now known as the world’s fourth economic growth country and also the most investment-attraction country because of Deng’s reforms and his intelligent leading.

+ PURPOSE OF THE PAPER: This paper is importantly and specifically aimed at saying briefly about the two leaders’ backgrounds and at launching some analyses and making some comparisons of the periods of their ruling of the country, and also their achievements. The achievements of the two leaders’ regime will also be shown as well.The followings are the three main sections: a short review of their backgrounds, their significant time toward their lives and the outcomes of the country’s ruling by the two leaders.

+ MAO’S SIGNIFICANT TIME TOWARD HIS LIFE:- POLITICAL IDEAS: The reason that Mao’s ideology was created because he was interested in “The Communist Manifesto” as he mentioned that "there were three books that left great impressions on my mind because they helped build up my solid faith in Marxism”. And among the three useful books was The Communist Manifesto. In addition, during 1920s, Mao led several labor struggles against the government but it was unsuccessful because it was cracked down by the government. Next, Mao used peasants and later became his major supporters for his successful revolution. I think the reason that he used peasants for his violent revolution because he might have thought that it was easy for him to persuade other peasants because they were peasants like him and the numbers of peasants had more than industrial workers or others. He might moreover have thought that peasants were like blank paper because they did not have much education. That is why it is easy to use them. However, Mao was not like other early Marxists because he did not want to spread communism all over the world.

- LEADERSHIP OF CHINA: On October 1, 1949, Mao Zedong had led the Chinese communists in war against the Japanese and in civil war and he proclaimed a new regime and also a new era for China. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) was created during that period, and Mao became the chairman of PRC as well. Mao promised a new era for China after becoming the chairman the PRC but in reality, he was not. He was turned out to be an absolutely cruel and dictatorial leader as he, during his first political campaigns after founding the PRC, killed hundreds of thousands of people, who were Kuomintang’s officials expressing the will of counter-revolution.

1http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MaoAs the U.S. State department in 1976 estimated that there may have been a million killed in the land reform, 800,000 killed in the counterrevolutionary campaign2. However, Mao himself claimed a total of 700,000 killed during these early years (1949–53)3. I think the way Mao led his country was not the way to develop his country but to destroy the whole China like the way Pol Pot did in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. Mao worked very differently from the way that Deng Xiaoping did during his regime that I am going to elaborate in the following paragraphs under Deng’s leadership. The reason that I mentioned that the way that Mao ruled his country was the way to abolish the whole China because he worked closely with peasants, abandoning intellectuals and he killed millions of intellectuals and businessmen, who were against his revolution and in his land reforms. After the land reform, Mao launched another campaign called “Hundred Flowers Campaign”, which was a campaign intended to limit people the freedom of expression against his policy, and hundreds of thousands Chinese citizens were killed because of this campaign. After this campaign, he also carry out another 5-year plan, called “Great Leap Forward”, which was a destructive plan leading to the loss of millions of people’s lives.

- GREAT LEAP FORWARD: I think no one like Mao besides several dictatorial leaders, such as Adopt Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, Pol Pot and a few other guys in Italy and Cuba, and the rest of the world. Mao was, from my point of view, incredibly dictatorial and cruel leader in man’s history like certain other men mentioned above. It was almost nearly unfinished for one campaign leading to the killing of millions of people’s lives and another campaign occurred consequently. Like in the case after Hundred Flowers Campaign was the Great Leap Forward Campaign. I acknowledge that Mao really wanted China to be a strong and prosperous country through creating this Great Leap Forward Campaign because this campaign was designed to call for an increase in the speed of the growth of the

2http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao3Ibid.

production of steel and to raise agricultural production to twice 1957 levels, but his ambition was too high and too extreme, which could not be achieved and at the end led to the killing of millions of people’s lives that Mao himself turned to blame the famine, but in fact I think because people could not accomplish his task. Because Mao’s ruling, and especially the Great Leap Forward Campaign was too extreme and highly-unexpectedly campaign, which had dreceive much criticism from many people even from his wife Jiang Qing and from Deng Xiaoping and many other people as well. The reason that his wife and Deng Xiaoping and many other people disliked and criticized this campaign a lot because it was probably too extreme and highly-unexpected desire, and causing incredible numbers of up to millions of people.

- THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION: I personally think that Mao was very smart during that time because he was about to be removed from his office by his members of the Communist Party such as Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping as he committed major mistakes creating the Great Leap Forward, which some members in his Communist Party did not like and support. That is why Mao created the Cultural Revolution forcing young intellectuals to move to the countryside to make weapons, which is from my own view, was just to disguise the situation of being afraid of being fired from his office. I myself do not like his idea of creating the Cultural Revolution because I think Mao’s ambition and his love of power was extremely high and unlimited even he had made many previous mistakes. This revolution lasted for three years starting in 1966 and finished in 1969, which took millions of Chinese citizens and the destruction of social of China's cultural heritage and the imprisonment of a huge number of Chinese citizens, as well as creating general economic and social chaos in the country4.

4http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao

+ MAO’S LEGACY: I do not think Mao had left many achievements apart from killing around 20 millions of Chinese people’s lives during his 27-year regime of revolution starting from 1949 until 1976. And, he did not change China significantly as did his successor Deng Xiaoping, who I will describe his remarkable life and his legacy in the following paragraphs; in contrast, Mao Zedong was also notorious for his cruel and dictatorial leadership in the ever-Chinese history.

+ DENG XIAOPING’S BACKGROUND:Deng was in Paifang village in Xiexing township, Guang'an County, Sichuan Province. He was educated in France, as were many notable Asian revolutionaries (such as Ho Chi Minh and Zhou Enlai), where he discovered Marxism-Leninism. Deng married 3 times. His first wife, Zhang Xiyuan, one of his schoolmates from Moscow, died when she was 24, a few days after giving birth to Deng's first child, a baby girl, who also died. His second wife, Jin Weiying left him after he came under political attack in 1933. His third wife, Zhuo Lin, was the daughter of an industrialist in Yunnan Province. She became a member of the Communist Party in 1938, and a year later married Deng in front of Mao's cave dwelling in Yan'an. They had five children5.

+ DENG XIAOPING’S LIFE:- DENG’S SIMILAR IDEA WITH MAO’S: Because Deng supported Mao in his Anti-Rightist Campaign of 1957 during the Hundred Flowers Campaign, he was given a title as a General Secretary of the Communist Party of China and ran the country's daily affairs with then PresidentLiu Shaoqi. He himself might, at this point, have had similar opinions with Mao’s or he might have pretended to support Mao’s Anti-Rightist Campaign in order to get promoted to reach a position as a General Secretary of the Communist Party of China. However, he later got different viewpoints from Mao discarding supporting Great Leap Forward.

5http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deng_Xiaoping

- DENG’S DIFFERENT IDEA FROM MAO’S: Deng did not support Mao’s idea of creating Great Leap Forward because I myself think Deng might have thought that this plan possibly caused many lives of the people, which was why Deng did not agree with Mao’s idea of establishing this Great Leap Forward plan because he wanted the output of especially the agricultural product coming from this plan to be high- twice 1957 level. This might have caused the loss of millions of people’s lives, but in contrast Mao partially agreed this bad outcome from his plan was because of the mismanagement, and he mostly blamed the natural phenomenon, the famine6.

- CHANGING CHINA THROUGH ECONOMIC REFORM: Deng Xiaoping was the first leader to improve the country’s relation with the outside world. Under the leadership of Deng’s time, the domestic social, political, and most notably, economic systems would undergo significant changes. He changed his country’s economic system from centrally planned economy to socialist market economy, which is a good aspect for changing poor and isolated China to one of the most developed and rapidly economic growth country throughout the world. This opened China to the world and it also attracts a lot of investment, which is very good for the Chinese economy and especially the whole China. Even though Chinese GDP growth was around 11% per year, it did not distribute equally to each individual, but it was much better than Mao’s leading of the country, which was notorious for its completely totalitarian and killing of millions of people’s lives.

+ CONCLUSION: In conclusion, Mao’s regime was inflexible because he used the peasants to lead his revolutionary and the reason that he used peasants in his revolution because he might think that it is easy to use them because they were not well educated. That is why it is easy to use them- they were just like blank hard disk so it is easy to install any program.

6http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MaoMeanwhile, during his time of ruling closed border economy was introduced, and people could not have criticized the government; otherwise, they would have been persecuted and later executed. On the contrary, Deng Xiaoping’s regime was more flexible than Mao’s. He did not use so many peasants to get involved with his politics, but he tried to persuade and encouraged the rich and especially intellectuals to enter his politics, which were better than peasants because they had more knowledge and money to support the party and benefit the society as well. Last of all, Planned economy was changed to free market economy, and the Chinese government could subsidize the firms which were going to be bankrupt in order to complete with other firms, which, from my own viewpoints, are excellent for Chinese economy and the whole China.